FBI arrests 2 in NYC terrorism investigation

Two men were arrested Friday in the investigation of a suspected bomb plot targeting New York City that previously led to charges against a Denver airport driver.

The arrests in New York of Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay
were part of “an ongoing investigation” by the Joint Terrorism
Task Force, according to FBI agent Richard Kolko, who declined to
comment further.

There were no immediate details on the charges against the men,
according to Kolko and Robert Nardoza, a spokesman for the U.S.
attorney’s office in Brooklyn.

The men were expected to appear in court later Friday, Nardoza
said.

Medunjanin’s attorney, Robert C. Gottlieb, said the FBI seized
his client’s passport Thursday. The search warrant indicated the
passport was sought as part of an investigation into a conspiracy
to use weapons of mass destruction.

The airport driver, Najibullah Zazi, previously pleaded not guilty to that charge. He is accused of getting al-Qaida training to build homemade bombs to attack New York City.

Federal investigators questioned Medunjanin and Ahmedzay — who lived in the same Queens neighborhood as Zazi — months ago in the terrorism probe. Their photographs were among four shown to Ahmad Wais Afzali, a Queens imam accused of tipping off Zazi that New York police detectives were looking for him, according to Afzali’s attorney.
   

Gottlieb has said FBI agents seized computers and cell phones
from Medunjanin’s apartment last fall but later returned them.

Gottlieb said the FBI confirmed the arrests for him Friday morning, many hours after they occurred. Gottlieb said he didn’t know what charges the men faced.

Gottlieb, who insists Medunjanin has done nothing wrong, said
officials at a Queens hospital had told him that authorities had
taken Medunjanin into custody after he was treated for minor
injuries from a traffic accident.

“They intentionally hid him from his lawyer and his family,”
Gottlieb said.

The name of Ahmedzay’s attorney was not on record.